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“DIGITAL-FIRST systems (as currently posed) represent a rather trivial form of information processing that fails to capture the logical structure of life as we know it.” http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/79/20120869 View in LinkedIn

“IN GENETICS-FIRST origin of life scenarios, it has therefore been suggested that early life may have undergone a ‘hardware upgrade’ (or a succession of upgrades), eventually transitioning from a proto-RNA genetic polymer (or even an inorganic substrate) into RNA-based biochemistry at a later stage in its evolutionary history. This system would then have undergone further hardware upgrades or ‘genetic-takeovers’ to arrive at the DNA–protein world we observe today.” https://lnkd.in/ewsT9EQ View in LinkedIn

RNA TO DNA. “In modern organisms, RNA is a biochemical mediator, enabling the translation of DNA to protein. RNA is unique in that it can fill both roles, acting as both a genetic polymer and a biochemical catalyst, with novel expanded roles for functional RNAs continually being discovered. This has led to the popular ‘RNA world’ hypothesis, where all known life is posited to have descended from an ancestral population of organisms that utilized RNA as their sole major biopolymer prior to the advent of DNA and protein.” http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/79/20120869 View in LinkedIn

RNA WORLD. “A widely accepted resolution to the seemingly inextricable duality of genotype–phenotype is that the modern ‘DNA–protein’ world evolved from simpler precursor system involving only one major molecular species that played both the role of information carrier and of enzymatic catalyst.” https://lnkd.in/ewsT9EQ View in LinkedIn

GENETICS OR DIGITAL FIRST? “A longstanding debate—often dubbed the chicken or the egg problem—is which came first, genetic heredity or metabolism? A conundrum arises because neither can operate without the other in contemporary life, where the duality is manifested via the genome–proteome systems.” https://lnkd.in/ewsT9EQ View in LinkedIn

EVOLUTION OF INFORMATION. “How did information first gain causal purchase over certain complex systems that we now call living organisms?” http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/79/20120869 View in LinkedIn

TRANSITION OF STATES. “We therefore identify the transition from non-life to life with a fundamental shift in the causal structure of the system, specifically a transition to a state in which algorithmic information gains direct, context-dependent, causal efficacy over matter.” http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/79/20120869 View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE continues from last weekend on the theme of biological information. Most scientists today see this information as key to all life processes. How did biological information evolve? Did the transition from non-life to life come first? These are some of the interesting problems to figure out. View in LinkedIn

EVOLUTIONARY SUBSTRATE. "Heritable genetic variation for unreduced gamete production has been observed, thereby providing an evolutionary substrate. Unreduced gametes are also frequently involved in interspecific hybridisation events as well as being produced by interspecific hybrids, facilitating allopolyploidisation." https://lnkd.in/eSsUn-Y View in LinkedIn

NUMEROUS PATHS. "Unreduced gametes (gametes with the somatic chromosome number) are known to facilitate polyploid formation. Unreduced gametes result from a plethora of different mechanisms across different taxa, suggesting that the ability to produce unreduced gametes has evolutionary utility." https://lnkd.in/eSsUn-Y View in LinkedIn